“These are not jurists,” he cried so that he was heard in the whole of the guard-house. “They are nothing but cruel, heartless boys, without mercy either for people or truth! I know why I am confined here, I know it! By casting the blame on me they want to hide the real culprit! The Count killed her; and if it was not the Count, it was his hireling!”
When he heard that Kuz'ma had been arrested, he was at first very pleased.
“Now the hireling has been found!” he said to me. “Now he's been found!”
But soon, when he saw he was not released and when he was informed of Kuz'ma's testimony, he again became depressed.
“Now I'm lost,” he said, “definitely lost. In order to get out of prison this one-eyed devil will be sure sooner or later to name me and say it was I who wiped my hands in his skirts. But you yourself saw that my hands had not been wiped!”
Sooner or later our suspicions would have to be elucidated.
About the end of November of that year, when snow began to drift before my windows and the lake looked like an endless white desert, Kuz'ma wanted to see me; he sent the guard to me to say he had “bethought himself.” I ordered him to be brought to me.
“I am very pleased that you have at last bethought yourself,” I greeted him. “It is high time to finish with this dissembling and this leading us all by the nose like little children. Well, of what have you bethought yourself?”
Kuz'ma did not answer; he stood in the middle of my room in silence, staring at me without winking.… Fright shone in his eyes; his whole person showed signs of great fright; he was pale and trembling, and a cold perspiration poured down his face.
“Well, speak! What have you remembered?” I asked again.